Freddie Mercury 's first girlfriend Rose Pearson has told of the moment she realised he was gay and ended their relationship, never to speak to him again.
In a new documentary, A Life in 10 Pictures, she explains that it came after they had spent a day looking at artistic portrayals of same-sex wrestling.
She said: “We had been to the V&A and seen Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of men wrestling in the nude. I could see he was enamoured in a way that went beyond art appreciation. Then we went to see Ken Russell’s Women in Love and he was dumbfounded by the wrestling scene. He wanted to stay in the cinema and see the whole thing again.
“My blood ran cold, not because it was a bad film but because of the implications. That was the tipping point.”
Pearson, who later changed her name to Rose Rose, met Mercury while studying at Ealing Art College.
She says their relationship, which came before Queen formed, was both “physical and emotional” but admits she did feel “maternal” towards Mercury.
After seeing his reaction to the wrestling, she broke up with him.
“I knew we weren’t the right people for each other and he desperately wanted a relationship with a man by then. I couldn’t stand by and watch that, “ she tells Radio Times.
“I’d been away in Russia for two weeks and realised, when I came back, that I had to get a grip of myself and take matters into my own hands.”
Afterward, she never spoke to him again and found it difficult to hear about the relationships he would go on to have, even avoiding watching his performances with Queen if she could.
She said Mercury was shocked when she left him, explaining: “He didn't see it coming at all.” But she believes he had already started moving on, saying he was “getting ready for something without knowing what the something was”.
The BBC2 series examines the lives of stars through ten pictures, in this case ranging from Mercury in full rocker mode to lesser-known ones of him as Farrokh Bulsara, a shy refugee from Zansibar who arrived in the UK as a teenager.
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